Transition to universal credit: Northern Ireland

This section of the site includes UC legislation specific to Northern Ireland. You can find out more about the detail of roll-out of UC in Northern Ireland in our NI guidance section. You can read about payment flexibilities in Northern Ireland in our payments section.

The Welfare Reform Bill was introduced to the Northern Ireland Assembly on 1 October 2012. The Bill has progressed slowly and stalled several times due to disagreement between the various political parties. In December 2014, the Northern Ireland parties agreed a deal on welfare reform (The Stormont House Agreement) in order to get the Bill through the final stages of the Assembly process.

However, on 9 March 2015, Sinn Fein withdrew support for the Bill under the terms of the agreement meaning the Bill stalled once again. On 22 May 2015, a petition of concern was presented by Sinn Fein and SDLP. A petition of concern allows coalition members to block bills which do not have sufficient cross-community support. The Bill therefore stalled once again.

The Northern Ireland Assembly would be asked to agree a Legislative Consent Motion to allow the UK Government to legislate for welfare reform in Northern Ireland.

A Bill would be introduced in Westminster under a fast track procedure, to enable effect to be given to welfare changes introduced in Great Britain by the Welfare Reform Act 2012 and other measures to be introduced under the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016.

Money will be allocated from Executive funds to top-up UK welfare arrangements over a four year period to include funding to top-up tax credits and to ensure tenants in Northern Ireland are not affected by social sector size criteria.

The agreement also set up the Welfare Reform Mitigations Working Group to report on a mitigation strategy to Welfare Reform specific to Northern Ireland.

Their report, published on 20 January 2016, highlights mitigation under 3 strands covering disability and carers; advice and sanctions; and mitigation for tax credits and Universal Credit. Strand 3, mitigation for tax credits and Universal Credit recommends aspects of additional discretionary support, for example supplementary payments which recognise the costs incurred by workers with a special weighting for lone parents taking account of childcare costs, discretionary support available for emergency payments in hardship cases as Universal Credit rolls out and an allocation of discretionary support for voluntary sector advice.

The text of the Bill can be found on the NI Assembly website, and links to each stage of the Bill can be found below:

As explained above, under the Fresh Start agreement made in November 2015 it was agreed that the UK Government would legislate for welfare reform in Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland (Welfare Reform) Act 2015 is an enabling measure providing power to legislate for welfare reform in Northern Ireland and confer powers on the Secretary of State or the Department of Communities (previously DSD) to make further provision by regulations and order.

This Order makes provision equivalent to the Welfare Reform Act 2012 and will implement the reforms contained in that Act in Northern Ireland, with some limited specific changes, including top up powers and a different sanctions regime, as agreed in the Stormont House Agreement and in previous discussions between the Government and the NI Executive. This order also allows Regulations to be brought forward to implement the various welfare reforms.

Welfare Reform and Work (Northern Ireland) Order 2016 (Commencement No. 3) Order 2017 (SR.No.166 /2017) - This Order brings into force provisions in the Welfare Reform and Work (Northern Ireland) Order 2016 relating to loans for mortgage interest. It also brings into force a provision which removes the ability for the limited capability for work element to be paid to universal credit claimants and a provision which makes changes to the work-related requirements which apply to certain responsible carers in universal credit.

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